Rita Bender speaking at a press conference in Washington DC, mid 1964. (Stan Wayman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) “My husband, Michael Schwerner, did not die in vain,” she said at ...

Rita Schwerner testified before the credentials committee with Freedom Democratic Party members standing in silent tribute. "She's very strong and sensitive," said Ed King, a Freedom Party delegate.

Mickey Schwerner's wife Rita, who was also a CORE worker, tried to convert that attention to the overlooked victims of racial violence. “The slaying of a Negro in Mississippi is not news.

RITA SCHWERNER BENDER: Yes, but that was after the three of them were missing, and there was enormous attention. And the enormous attention was because two of the three men were white.

On the C-SPAN Networks: Rita Schwerner-Bender is a Spouse with two videos in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a 1989 News Conference. The year with the highest average number of ...

Edgar Ray Killen, the defendant in the civil rights slaying trial, was taken to the hospital on the first day of testimony in Mississippi.

The killing of three civil-rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964 changed America. But today, if you want to know what happened here, you need to know who to ask.

Killen was in court while the procedural matters were disposed of but left before the 45-minute testimony of Rita Schwerner Bender of Seattle, widow of Michael Schwerner.

On Aug. 5, 1964, authorities located the murdered bodies of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — three Freedom Summer workers in Meridian, Miss. — in a shallow grave in ...

JACKSON, Mississippi – Three civil rights workers, including one from Pelham, who were killed by Ku Klux Klansmen in 1964 are going to be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom ...